Future Tense: Nexus Netiquette

Not too long ago, I was sitting with a group of friends, schmoozing about computer games and our experiences with Starcraft II.

There’s a decision point in the single-player game where you have to choose whether to go with Tosh or abandon him and go with Nova. That’s the place where I got stuck and stopped playing. Why? Because I’ve been writing the script for the next Starcraft Ghost Academy manga, which deals with the backstory of both these characters. (No spoilers here, but I know why they hate each other so much. Neither of them are villains, it’s deeper than that.) But having written about their training at the Ghost Academy, I’ve fallen so in love with these characters that I cannot choose one over the other. Eventually, I will, but not without considerable regret about the path not taken.

In the meantime, I’ve been playing the custom maps on battle.net. Some are from Blizzard, some have been written by talented enthusiasts. One of my favorite 4v4 maps is a seductive little exercise called Nexus Wars. Imagine two parallel lanes accessing a base at each end. You play on a team of four, defending one of the bases. Your goal is to destroy the opposing base by sending warriors down your lane. You and a teammate play one lane, your other two teammates play the other lane—but you can all help each other, of course. This is a game where teamwork is essential.

You control an SCV and place buildings strategically to defend your base and access your lane of attack. You get income at timed intervals. The more structures you place, the more income you get. The installations automatically generate units at timed intervals, marines, roaches, zealots, mauraders, stalkers, queens, thors, hydralisks, colossi—depending on the structures, whatever you can afford to build. As the various units are generated they proceed across the lane toward the other base, attacking whatever opposing units they come in contact with. Your team wins by generating an overwhelming army of units to counter the army of units headed your way. There’s a lot of back and forth pushing, because every unit has a strength as well as a weakness. You need to counter ground and air units appropriately. In addition, every player has one nuke to use if the other side threatens to overrun your buildings.

Nexus Wars is fairly easy to learn. And while it looks like it’s a game of strategy, it’s actually a game of logistics. The team that better understands the strengths and weaknesses of the various units will always have the advantage. While most games are over in thirty minutes or less, if you get well-matched players who know what they’re doing, a game can go a lot longer. At the forty minute mark, all units increase to 300% damage to prevent stalemates, but even with that deadline in play, I was once in a game that lasted longer than an hour.

Eventually our discussion went from strategy and tactics to specific experiences. And that’s when it got especially interesting. Nexus Wars—like all of the team-player maps—is at its most fun when the members of each team actually behave like a team. It stops being fun when one or more players start acting like bullies, whether they’re on your side or the other. All of the multi-player games on battle.net have a chat mode for players to interact, plan strategies, give advice, bemoan the occasional lag—and sometimes behave very badly.

Bullying has been in the news a lot lately—particularly cyber-bullying. In some of the most horrific situations, cyber-bullying has even pushed teens to suicide.

One of my friends is adamant that bullying is the wrong word. “It’s not bullying—it’s abuse. If an adult did it to another adult, it would be abuse. If the act were done face-to-face, it would be abuse. But when we call it bullying, we’re diminishing the criminal aspect of it as well as the emotional damage it produces. It’s abuse, let’s be clear about that.”

I can’t say that there’s a lot of online bullying in the Blizzard games, but it happens often enough to be noticeable and objectionable. I play Starcraft II in the evening, usually three or four games in a session. I would guess that I see players behaving badly at least two or three times a week. Mostly it’s petty, but occasionally it’s ugly. Friends of mine have reported similar experiences.

Online abuse isn’t uncommon, but sometimes it’s vicious and malicious, whether it’s on battle.net, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube comments, DelphiForums, or anywhere else. There’s no way to know who’s on the other side of the screen—whether it’s a socially inept youngling or an adult with anger-management issues or simply a miserable old curmudgeon who’s fossilized into a self-righteous pain in the patoot—but it’s clear that the presumed anonymity of the internet creates an illusion of safety for sociopathic impulses. The result is abusive behavior. The online world is a place where people can express their dark side without regard for the effect they have on others, without fear of immediate consequences.

So what do you do when you run into an online abuser?

In a discussion forum a patient presentation of facts and logic and research is always an appropriate response, certainly better than name-calling, but in a real-time game that’s not an option.

One game I remember, a player started calling people on the other team coarse epithets based on race, religion, and presumption of sexual orientation. I was so disgusted, I quit the game. And so did a couple of other players. That player ruined the game for everybody, including himself.

The thing about multi-player games is that at their best they teach the importance of teamwork and social skills. Unfortunately, at their worst they also provide a place where the mannerless can indulge in asocial behavior. It’s a collision of the good, the bad, and the ucking fugly. Like a Clint Eastwood western, good people get abused when the sociopaths run amok. Except online, there’s no Clint Eastwood to clean up the town.

One of my friends summed up the dilemma thusly, “We’re the good guys, we’re supposed to be the smart ones. Surely, we should be able to figure out a good way to deal with this kind of crap, something more than just quitting the game.”

My buddy Peskydang (short for ‘that pesky Dan Goodman’) recently shared a tactic that he sometimes uses. He said that he hates hearing people say, ‘that’s so gay.’ It contributes to the cultural conversation that being gay is weak and that gay people are objects of ridicule. The language contributes to bullying. He also hates ‘lame’ and ‘retarded’ as epithets for similar reasons. Those words stigmatize the physically and mentally disabled. And he doesn’t like the term ‘noob’ either. Everybody was a beginner once, and most of us have benefited from the help and advice of more experienced users.

He went on to say that he’d seen ‘that’s gay’ or ‘you’re a fag’ in various battle.net games enough times that it started to get to him. One day, he decided to respond, “I’m asking you politely. Please don’t use the word ‘gay’ like that.”

The first time he did that, one of his teammates patiently explained to him that he should get used to it, the language has changed, and it’s like saying ‘lame’ or ‘retard.’ Peskydang replied, “I’m gay and I find it offensive.” The response: “Too bad. Gay means lame. Deal with it.” Pesky did. He said, “If that’s how you feel, then I can’t be your teammate,” and he quit the game. Later, however, after he thought about it, he decided that was an insufficient response. He decided that he needed to make his point more dramatically.

A few nights later, it happened again. He asked a teammate not to say “that’s so gay.” This time the response was even angrier. His so-called teammate typed, “Let me explain to you how the world works. Being gay is wrong. Normal people don’t like you.” So Pesky salvaged (removed) all his buildings from the map, targeted a nuke onto that teammate’s base, paused the game—and quit. When the other player unpaused the game, the first thing that he’d see would be nuke going off over his base. A nuclear blast is one of the most dramatic ways to express yourself. (In real life as well as in games.) Pesky’s departure in such a manner would almost certainly guarantee a quick and bloody defeat for the author of the abusive language.

Pesky shared this with the group and several of us acknowledged the eloquence of the tactic. “It’s a very dramatic way to say, ‘screw you.’ But what does it accomplish?”

Peskydang said, “Well, to be honest, I don’t think it’s going to change anyone’s mind, let alone their behavior, but at the very least I can keep that person from winning the game and demonstrate to him that there’s an in-game cost to abusive behavior.”

“But isn’t this unfair to the other players on your team?”

“Maybe so,” Pesky agreed. “But there are kids out there being abused by online jerks everyday. And it’ll continue as long as the rest of us allow the jerks to get away with it. The silence of other players is a kind of complicity. I say it’s time to take a stand that online abuse is unacceptable. When it occurs, we should stop the game dead in its tracks. I don’t have the authority to kick a jackass off battle.net, but I do have the personal authority to deny him access to my skills as a player.” (For the record, Pesky is a strong player. He wins a lot more than he loses because he manages his resources well.)

After thinking about it for a bit—I do think Pesky has a point. There’s no excuse for abuse. If we’re the good guys, we shouldn’t be silent. If the internet is a safe place for bullies to anonymously abuse others, then it has to be an equally safe place for the rest of us to confront those abusers and say, “Stop that. You cannot treat other people like that. If you continue doing that, I will not be your teammate. This game is over.”

Maybe one or two confrontations won’t change the behavior of an abuser—but if a person is consistently confronted and denied the opportunity to misbehave in a game designed for teamwork and cooperation, then maybe eventually he will get the message that the game is there for everyone. And everyone is entitled to be treated with respect. Everyone.

Maybe I’m being idealistic and maybe it’s impossible to get sociopaths to control themselves—but maybe another way is possible too. Maybe if we can figure out ways to make our online interactions a little more respectful, then maybe someday we could do that in the much larger game we call the real world.

What do you think?

—————

David Gerrold is a Hugo and Nebula award-winning author. He has written more than 50 books, including "The Man Who Folded Himself" and "When HARLIE Was One," as well as hundreds of short stories and articles. His autobiographical story "The Martian Child" was the basis of the 2007 movie starring John Cusack and Amanda Peet. He has also written for television, including episodes of Star Trek, Babylon 5, Twilight Zone, and Land Of The Lost. He is best known for creating tribbles, sleestaks, and Chtorrans. In his spare time, he redesigns his website, www.gerrold.com

Comments

If you cannot cowboy up and take charge of your own thoughts, emotions, and behavior, then YOU are the problem, not a poor loser or a kid or someone who likes to liven things up.

My wife, who was a psychiatric social worker, once showed me why. We were on a bus when a drunk came over and started touching her. She told him in a LOUD voice to go sit down (you have to talk loud to a drunk she told me later). He did and she went back to reading. I asked her "Didn't that guy bother you?" She said "Why should I let some poor drunk's bad behavior affect how I feel?"

Now that is easy to say and not easy to do, but WITH PRACTICE, you can learn to live with pretty much anything that is thrown your way. Pretend it is a game (heh) where some random person who you do not know is trying to make you upset. The winner is the one who is still calm at the end of the game.

The internet, forums, online games, and LAN games pretty much eliminates any real world inhibitions, language restraints, or codes of conduct for a lot of people. That is so obvious that tens of thousands of people have commented on it. Absolutely NOTHING you can do or say will ever have any sort of meaningful impact on it. So why let it bother you?

No offence to anyone, or to you, but man up, dude. Men are acting like little girls nowadays. In fact, everyone's acting like a little girl these days. Just watch people comment on my post asking me if I mean offence to little girls. If someone gets offended even in the least, they bring out their lawyers. I play mmorpg's and mmofps's, halo, all those games, so i understand the situation. To be perfectly honest, i've gotten offended, and there are perfectly good ways to deal with it, such as ignoring the idiot who's spewing trash at you. Not hard, see? The world will never get together, hold hands and sing happy songs around a campfire. It's life, so deal with it.

I beg to differ: I think that nuking your team-mate and then quitting is pretty much 'manning up', at least in the online context.

Treating other people like crap and insulting them is not terribly manly - particularly if one is doing it through the safety of an online chatroom. Someone who insults me in a bar or on the street at least isn't a complete coward.

Ignoring someone flaming or trollling is only effective against people who are actively seeking attention, and doesn't have any effect on the other class concerned: idiots who just don't 'get it'. They need to have a lesson taught to them - ignoring them is just rewarding their negative behavior with no negative consequences.

So, I think you should look carefully at the class of fool you are dealing with and act appropriately: ignore or nuke, as needed.

That's childish. Nuking leads to more nuking. Nuking and quitting makes you a quitter, and a person who can't deal with people. Ignoring people who want attention makes them shut up. Trust me man, i'd know.

Golly, it sure sounds like someone doesnt like that pesky old first ammendment very much now do they.

Hey i have to suffer the slings and arrows of christians daily. all i hear on TV is god this and jesus that, day after day. why should any self respecting athiest have to suffer the supernatural indulgences of a bronze age superstition who en-mass expect (demand) i forfiet my ability to reason and decide logicaly.

Funny that i dont hear anyone defend the rights of the logical minded athiest but will pander to cult religions of even the most non-sensical nature. This truely and honestly is grinding me down slowly over the years. and overly simplified articals like this make arguments that the world is black and white and every problem can be resolved by simply banning everyone that offends us without considering the consequences. You have though of what happens if you force people to speak a certain way right????

Yea i have gay friends as well and dont like abusive behaviour but seriously, you will never ever live in a world where you will not have to hear anything offensive. its just simply NOT going to happen. no matter how many games you ruin for others. do i really have to tell you that your speakers have a mute button? did you not see the kick player button?

I'm sorry to tell you this, but your friend should probably stick to LAN parties and not play online. He handled the situation in the worst way possible. How? Think of it from the perspective of the innocent parties here. You are playing your game and trying to enjoy it when two of the players get into a confrontation about real life beliefs (already red warning flags are appearing..you NEVER talk about real-life beliefs no matter how offended or adament you are about them). All of a sudden one of the two people nukes your base and leaves the game.

You know what that person has become now in the eyes of the innocent? A bully. A fiend that just ruined their game because he/she didn't have a thick enough skin to ignore some anonymous kid in a game.

So he doesn't like the "abuse" that occurs when some words are flung around haphazardly, and he takes revenge for that? His justification is eerily similar to that which school shooters use to justify their actions.

Let me end this with a famous and cliche quote: "Welcome to the Internet". If I was offended every single time someone called me a dirty name, or insulted my sexual orientation, or slandered my parents, or pasted my religion, I would have dropped the internet as a whole 10 years ago. It all has to stop, but it is not going to due to human nature. You cannot force it to end and, quite frankly, should never try to force it. It is what you call freedom, with all the amazingly good things and horribly bad things that come with it. Forcing your opinion on someone by being an accessory to all the wrong-doing (and even escalating it) is not only wrong, it is counter-productive.

I played in a no-swearing CounterStrike: Source server the other day and it was surprisingly fun. The guys in it didn't swear even on the microphone and they were a good fun group to play with. They were able to crack various jokes and stabs at eachother without 'bullying' or using swearing, obscenities or racism of any kind.

I was quite taken aback by the friendliness of the competition and although i had my 'donkey' handed to me i would probably go back to that server and play with that group again.

Very good article! Its pretty unknown but there is a Machinima Respawn Premier director that started an anti cyber abuse campaign called the KEN campaign with KEN meaning Keep Everything Nice. I have been supporting it since the day I found out about it, the best way is to put KEN as a clan tag in your name.

On dealing with them, thats another problem, personally i find that leaving is the worst thing to do because it give them the satisfaction of making you leave. Personally I tell them to stop first then, if they don't I start a votekick if the game supports it, if not I will mute and tell everyone else to do so to if they are against said person, finally if they rejoin or the game I will start a voteban. I have only resorted to the last option once and the guy though it was funny to do a DOS attack against me.

The only context in which the word "gay" means lame or stupid is when used by the misguided to put a whole class of people down. This idea that the accepted meaning of gay is now changed because a bunch of hostile straight people think it's funny, is an excellent example of how the definition of the word bigotry has not changed. Note that I refrained from caling the people who misuse "gay" bigots. Their actions are bigoted, but that does not necessarily mean that the people themselves are correctly labeled as bigots. I, for one, wish that there were more players online like the guy described in the article and fewer who think that it is ok to abuse folks - especially through the use of language that is deeply offensive to LGBT people.

As a person who does tend to get a little over-excited at times, I have definitely flamed on people online (on MaxPC forums, too). I do (perhaps incorrectly) distinguish between flipping out on someone for being an idiot, and tossing out derogatory terms at people simply to be a troll. There are certain terms that one just should not use, regardless of the situation - you covered those and I agree.

Gay: while it might be 'acceptable' for kids to say this now (yeah, right), when you communicate with another person, it is most important to take that own person's expectations and beliefs into account. If you don't consider the feelings of the person you are talking with, you won't have a positive interaction; 'just deal with it' is not a valid thing to say to someone who you are genuinely interested in communicating with.

I like that you have found a relatively distinguished way to deal with trolls and bigots. I like that there actually is a good reason to maliciously nuke a teammate as well. This would be great in Supreme Commander.

The part I like more is clearly communicating your distaste, then leaving and refusing to team with the person. While that will surely turn on the few people who do troll for kicks, perhaps the carrot-and-stick tactic will work with some. You have my vote, and my promise to use what you have outlined instead of just or ignoring behavior I find offensive in the extreme.

...writing to Blizzard and urge them to moderate the chat lines a bit and hand out 24 hour banhammers to people ruining the game for all. A simple button for "report this chat to a GM" would go a long way to quieting these jerks. I know they won't be able to ban every jerk, and they won't be able to moderate every chat that happens, but you have to start somewhere.

I just deal with the fact that these terms have become synonymous with insults; your friend is overreacting to the empty banter of kids and trolls. While I don't agree with abuse, the worst thing you can do is encourage it by feeding the trolls with your rage and letting them derail entire matches. I just ignore the fact that people use "nerd" as an insult. I don't get mad. It's not that hard.

One of my favorite tactics is ramp up the fight but position yourself as a third party- battle royales tend to end quickly with silence. For example, if someone calls something "gay", I won't take offense or help them derail the match by "providing a dis-incentive to their behavior." It's much better to defend your "gay friend" on your team and cite a tolerant society in response to his confusion.

(P.S. calling something "retarded" often implies that the person responsible for it is retarded)

Because I am so familiar with this kind of abuse around me online, I'm glad someone is standing up to it. The worst game where I've had a problem is the Modern Warfare 2 P2P servers. [Yes, removing the 'kick' ability is crippling to online gameplay]. I would say that I was going to start telling people to 'STfU n00b' while they were being stupid, but I have slowed down on playing online games for the much better and more entertaining single player campaigns. [Save for a single, loving CSS server.]
Thank you for posting this, I'm glad someone with intellect could comment on this issue.